What Is Protest?

What is protesting?
How do you protest?
Why do you protest?

If you ask a 12 year old kid what is Protest, he or she will answer either yes or no. Most will answer no, or answer differently. That’s because 30 out of %70 kids know what protest really is. So then what is protest?

Protest is an event which is caused by an error that someone disagrees with, so they fight for the rule or law to be changed. It isn’t actual fighting like a fist-fight but it’s when people march to a certain place and shout at the building and the people inside, hoping they’ll be heard. Anyone can join in as long as their fighting for the same cause. You would have possibly seen all this happen with people holding banners and signs pleading for their wishes to be met.

Protests can work, an example of this is the Parihaka protest when the maori did not fight when the pakeha invaded them, but instead offered food for the british soldiers, and the maori sent their children to greet the soldiers. This protest wasn’t respected until 2017 when they were apologised to. Another example is Kate Sheppards, how she wrote the women’s Suffrage Petition, when over 25,000 women signed it requesting they should be able to vote for government policy. New Zealand was the first country in the world to let women vote for government. Both of these protests worked and were acknowledged even to today. They were so acknowledged that on the face of a NZ $10 note, Kate Sheppard is printed onto the paper. Wow! Isn’t that cool.

I hope you have learnt more about protests and even NZ history of protesting. Now you should know probably more about protesting than me. Check out more of my blog!